Will Olympic volunteering have an enduring impact?

Will there be an Olympic legacy for the voluntary sector, asks John Mohan

The Olympics attracted many first time volunteers but will they leave a lasting impact on ther sector? Photograph: Jonathan Hordle / Rex Features
Jonathan Hordle / Rex Features/Jonathan Hordle / Rex Features

Volunteering has had a very high profile at the London 2012 Olympics. The streets of the capital, as well as the venues themselves, were populated with armies of "Games makers" and television viewers witnessed the vivid spectacle of hundreds of volunteer dancers performing in the opening ceremony. But what will be the enduring impact of volunteering at the Games?

Upwards of 70,000 people were involved, a figure which is comparable with those reported for Atlanta, Sydney and Athens. However, even if they were all new to volunteering, that alone wouldn't greatly influence national volunteering statistics since around 20 million people volunteer in the UK.

The impact is more likely to be felt if volunteering in the Games leads to a greater level of interest in volunteering generally.

We could draw parallels with trends in charitable giving after Live Aid in the mid-1980s, or after major disasters such as the Asian tsunami. The overall level of giving to overseas development charities rose after the Ethiopian famine and Live Aid, but did not continue to rise. The proportion of households giving to charities as a whole, and the mean amount given, did not suggest any dramatic change. This suggests that we might not anticipate dramatic change in volunteering levels as a result of the Olympics once the immediate enthusiasm for the Games dies down.

But has the Olympics attracted new people to volunteer? To answer this question we need to look at comparisons between the Games volunteers, the general population and the volunteering population to see whether the Games have drawn underrepresented groups into voluntary activities. Did Olympic volunteering offer opportunities to all, or reproduce existing social and geographical gradients?

It's possible that volunteers were not typical of the population. Take the opening ceremony. This required people committing 120 hours of rehearsal time – averaged over a year, that's the equivalent of two and a half hours a week, plus travel to and from rehearsals on top.

Not many people maintain such a degree of engagement. That level of voluntary activity is comparable with what we have elsewhere termed the "civic core" – a small subset of the population who provide the bulk of the voluntary effort. This group tends to be unrepresentative of the general population – it is mainly well-educated, middle-aged and well-off.

The visibility of volunteering could inspire more people to come forward for future volunteering opportunities, though it might just attract them to similar glamorous causes. After the 2002 Commonwealth games, in Manchester, the organisation Manchester Event Volunteers (Mev) was set up, with support from the local authority, to recruit volunteers for other large events in the region.

Setting up a special-purpose vehicle makes sense, especially if there is likely to be a succession of occasional large-scale sporting or other occasions. However, an alternative viewpoint would be that in austere times there are many less fashionable causes in need of support, and it is them to which we should be seeking to channel potential volunteers.

There are regular reports of important voluntary organisations which are suffering financially or even going into liquidation, and many would argue that it is more of a priority to find support for them than for high-profile events.

If so, we will need an infrastructure to do it. If you are a prospective volunteer, you need to be able to find an organisation that can make use of your time and talents. The last thing we want is to discourage people who come forward to volunteer. But unfortunately, the National Association for Voluntary and Community Action (Navca) is reporting that many of its members are anticipating a worsening financial position – and these are the bodies that act as clearing houses between volunteers and volunteering opportunities.

The Games offers great potential to showcase volunteering, but it's really important that we try to capitalise on that with support for the volunteering infrastructure.